Chapter 6: The Interrogations
I did not participate in the formal interviews. Conflict of interest protocols required that I stay clear of the interrogation rooms. But Ruiz briefed me after each one.
My father broke first. He admitted they had moved Grandpa to the shed after he began asking pointed questions about missing funds from his pension. He claimed it was my mother’s idea. He claimed he had only gone along to “keep the peace.”
Kyle tried to minimize everything. He described the shed as a “temporary solution” and insisted Grandpa had been fed regularly. The medical evidence made his statements laughable.
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My mother refused to speak without an attorney. When she finally did, she leaned hard into the dementia narrative, painting herself as an overwhelmed caregiver and me as a vengeful daughter who had manufactured a crisis for attention. The forged documents and the hidden phone destroyed that defense before it gained any traction.
I watched the recorded interviews later in a secure room at the precinct. My mother’s face on the screen was the same face that had smiled across the dinner table while calling her own father a useless old man rotting in a shed. The only difference was the fear she could no longer fully conceal.
